Precautions

Your phone could be bricked during the process. No warranties, blah blah blah.
Use the download links here. The internet is full of crap.
Fully charge the phone’s battery and use a laptop to avoid problems due to power failures.
I used the company laptop with Windows XP, because the rooting program is for Windows.
Back up your data. I did not, as contacts are synced with Google and all else is on the SDcard.

Backups are for whimps (Linus Torvalds)

1. Install official stock Froyo

Only if you have an older device which came with Android 2.1.

You need the Motorola drivers for the PC. Download if the USB connection does not work.

Motorola has released an official update program for Windows. Download. Search the net for other details.

This post is about the richness of hacker-lingo. Let’s take, for instance, custom ROMs for Android devices. The real name of the phenomenon is actually “cooked ROM”. Let just savour the beauty of this expression for a moment…

After some frustration with the slowness and general crapness of the official Motorola Froyo for my Defy, I’ve finally made up my mind and installed CyanogenMod-7 last Friday. I’ve followed the instructions of an excellent guide in Hungarian. General impressions:

I’m root by default and busybox is installed. Good start.

The amount of configuration options is mind-boggling.

The status bar is black at last. And the home screen auto-rotates as well.

It’s bloody fast.

It works.

It plays the most fluid liquid drum and bass all day long from my favourite internet radio. It plays offline music and navigates in the car. It GPS-tracks my cycling routes. It can read and write email. It can browse the web. It syncs my contacts between the phone and Evolution automatically via Google. It takes pictures. It browses pictures, much better and faster than the utterly crap Moto-Gallery. Blimey, it can even make phone calls!

It reads the Bible in Hungarian, Greek and Hebrew, just to name a few. Thanks to the new app and-bible. It’s sooooo much better than YouVersion. Swipe left for next chapter. Get to the Hebrew Aleppo codex with one tap. Local search. No pretend-to-be-social-internet-junkiness. Just do one thing extremely well. Respect.

Back to CM7, I have a week impression that it’s a bit heavier on the battery than the stock firmware. But it needs to be confirmed.

Tomorrow is the big day. We’ll test whether it connects via Bluetooth to the helmets of the great Defy-using-and-motorcycling community at the office. Which the original Moto firmware does not. Keep fingers crossed.

My Moto V3i began to give up. As usual, the flip bearings became loose and, the phone reset itself ever more often, usually while receiving calls. Slightly disturbing.

So, eventually, I also gave up resisting the smartphone wave and started looking for incrementing my Linux kernel-count. The main candidate was the HTC Hero with its sturdy aluminium housing. That is, until I found the strange Motorola Defy on the Hungarian Price Machine. Slightly cheaper, with an even more sturdy shock- and waterproof housing and scratch-proof glass. Hungarians don’t like stuff if it is scratched. The gadget also has a 0.8 GHz ARM processor, accelerometers, n-type WiFi, GPS and a Full Wide touchscreen with 854 x 480 resolution.

True to form I did two things with it on the first day:

rooted it

poured water on it

Both with excellent results. It also got a Terminal Emulator and Busybox installed on it. The reason? It turned out that Android’s underlying Linux is an extremely crude environment. First, it has no GNU tools. And they did not even bother with installing Busybox, the usual commands are links to either Google’s toolbox or Motorola’s motobox. Both very poor. My 8 MB OpenWrt router’s command line environment is a luxurious place compared to this phone (half gig internal memory, remember).

Oh, and how does it work as a phone, you may ask? Quite brilliantly, actually.

I no more need a camera. It takes brilliant pictures in daylight.
I no more need to carry a private laptop while travelling, as it’s got WiFi, Email and Web.
I no more need maps or a GPS device. i just GO.
I no more need those bloody 20th century CDs in the car. Just play music from the phone.